#52

March 12. 1945

Dear Mother:

I know I haven’t written for a very long time so I will dash off a note now and then tell you the whole story later. I have been on ten days leave and just got back today. The plans I hoped would materialize and which I will tell you about later seem to have changed very considerably. Result is I may be off again on a few days leave tomorrow. Looks like my crew and I won’t be doing any flying for quite a long time.

I don’t know whether I ever told you much about this present station. It is very small and not a flying station. In fact you can’t even see salt water from here although we are not far from the main station. This place is just for ground school and as it only handles a few crews at a time we soon get to know all the officers in the mess. Most of us all came together from the last station anyway. Result is we had a lot of fun and in the last few days had several parties which in a mess usually means drinking lots of beer (which is good training for the leave to come) and talking and singing. As the evening goes on events become more boisterous reaching some sort of climax such as when one would-be acrobat courageously attempted a neck roll over two chairs unmindful of the cement fall only carpeted by thin linoleum and landed, or so it looked, on the top of his head. Any person who tries such a feat must be thick in the head which, perhaps, is why he was unhurt.

In the two days after ground school finished we all haunted the CGI’s office for leave until he must have been sick of us. We were lucky in already having had our yellow fever innocs. because those crews that hadn’t were held over and although the CGI expected he could get leave for them they went to the main station the very afternoon after we left.

With love from
Tony.

[Editor’s note: Transcription provided by collection donor.]